Friday, April 07, 2006
It started innocently enough. This article from USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-03-30-bahamas-ban-brokeback_x.htm, was picked up by the NBC affiliate in Cincinnati, Ohio WLWT and I received the article in an e-mail that comes to me once a day giving interesting news stories from the region, the nation and the world. Having a passing interest in Brokeback Mountain because of my interest in the American West, my interest in the well being of the gay, lesbian, transsexual and transgendered community and because I was a big fan of director Ang Lee’s film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon I read the article with passing interest. Soon afterwards that same afternoon I received an e-mail from an acquiesce that I have known since my undergraduate days through both my undergraduate institution, my mentor at that university and from my continuing work with the Western Literature Association. In the e-mail was outlined the guidelines for a project that Texas A&M University is currently preparing in regards to Brokeback Mountain. From this kernel of information I decided to try to understand the Brokeback “fervor” or “phenomenon,” which ever you prefer in a different light. While trying not to be completely clinical I wanted to keep a journal of the ways that in my normal day-to-day life I was confronted with Brokeback Mountain over the course of one month starting April 6th of 2006. I have not read Annie Proulx’s short story, I do know Ms. Proulx’s work from my interest in Western American literature and from my subscription to the New Yorker, nor have I seen Lee’s film version of the story. In order to come to terms with Brokeback Mountain’s media saturation I started with the above article about the film being banned in the Bahamas and wanted to keep track of any conversation, article, e-mail or television commercial that I see in regards to the film and comment briefly on them. I must note that while not a conservative by any stretch of the imagination there is no type of media that I will be in placing myself into that will have me confront Brokeback directly on purpose. In concurrence with hoping to have portions of this journal published in Texas A&M’s project I will also be keeping The Brokeback Project as a blog on www.bloggers.com, starting April 7th. The blog will only be for formatting my thoughts daily I will not interact with any other bloggers until after project is completed. The blog will most likely be a day behind in updates because I do have a twenty-four hour period finding Brokeback related information.
A little about myself. My name is Jason Gallagher I am a 25-year-old independent scholar from Cincinnati, Ohio, originally from Saint Louis. Missouri and born and raised in Springfield, Illinois. I have a bachelor’s in English from Webster University in Saint Louis and am a credit and a thesis away from getting my master’s in English from another university. I have an academic interest in popular culture, especially film, as well as the literature of the 20th century American West, focusing on urban landscapes. My thesis is about the “golden age” of Los Angeles from 1930-1950. I live with my finance Susan in a 1890s row house that looks over the city of Cincinnati and onto the Ohio River and the Kentucky hills.
As a way of trying to prove that this is as scientific a process as a student of English can provide here is a list of media outlets that I have access to daily. I subscribe to an expanded service of cable television but aside from two days at the beginning of the experiment do not watch more then four hours of television a day, even on the weekends, mostly BookTV and the nightly news. I subscribe to the New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, and the Cincinnati Enquirer, and other then the fact that there are many months, from December to the present, worth of old copies of those magazines lying around the house they have been there before the idea of this project came to be. I pick up Cincinnati’s independent newspaper, CityBeat as while as its counterpart published by the Enquirer for young professionals CinWeekly every week. I write daily listening the public radio. I receive e-mail updates from WLWT and Cincinnati public radio daily. Other then checking my e-mail and reading the newspaper and the magazines that have been pilling up daily there is no other connection to the media other then television that I have outside of my 9 to 5 work week. I must omit that because of Cincinnati’s very conservative reputation I am coming into this project thinking their may be a little more coverage of Brokeback Mountain where then in other places but I am not excepting anything out of the ordinary. I also have to note that the week that I started the project was the same week that Brokeback came out on DVD for the first time. As a conclusion to this project I will not read Prouxl’s story nor see the film until the seventh of May to have the project come full circle.
A little about myself. My name is Jason Gallagher I am a 25-year-old independent scholar from Cincinnati, Ohio, originally from Saint Louis. Missouri and born and raised in Springfield, Illinois. I have a bachelor’s in English from Webster University in Saint Louis and am a credit and a thesis away from getting my master’s in English from another university. I have an academic interest in popular culture, especially film, as well as the literature of the 20th century American West, focusing on urban landscapes. My thesis is about the “golden age” of Los Angeles from 1930-1950. I live with my finance Susan in a 1890s row house that looks over the city of Cincinnati and onto the Ohio River and the Kentucky hills.
As a way of trying to prove that this is as scientific a process as a student of English can provide here is a list of media outlets that I have access to daily. I subscribe to an expanded service of cable television but aside from two days at the beginning of the experiment do not watch more then four hours of television a day, even on the weekends, mostly BookTV and the nightly news. I subscribe to the New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, and the Cincinnati Enquirer, and other then the fact that there are many months, from December to the present, worth of old copies of those magazines lying around the house they have been there before the idea of this project came to be. I pick up Cincinnati’s independent newspaper, CityBeat as while as its counterpart published by the Enquirer for young professionals CinWeekly every week. I write daily listening the public radio. I receive e-mail updates from WLWT and Cincinnati public radio daily. Other then checking my e-mail and reading the newspaper and the magazines that have been pilling up daily there is no other connection to the media other then television that I have outside of my 9 to 5 work week. I must omit that because of Cincinnati’s very conservative reputation I am coming into this project thinking their may be a little more coverage of Brokeback Mountain where then in other places but I am not excepting anything out of the ordinary. I also have to note that the week that I started the project was the same week that Brokeback came out on DVD for the first time. As a conclusion to this project I will not read Prouxl’s story nor see the film until the seventh of May to have the project come full circle.
# posted by J Gall. @ 2:15 PM 
